Jenni Rivera on Her New Reality Show: "We Want People to See What It Is to be Latina"

Jenni Rivera's new reality show, Jenni Rivera Presents Chiquis and Raq-C, premieres today at 3 p.m. on Mun2. Latina.com caught up with the music icon, her daughter, Janney (Chiquis) Marin, and Chicquis's best friend, radio personality Raquel Cordova (Raq-C), to talk about the series—and to hear why, as Latinas, they're more themselves than the girls on The Hills will ever be.

What is your reality series about?

Jenni Rivera: It's mainly about my daughter Chiquis and her best friend Raq-C. The cameras follow her around and you get to see how she organizes my life, my children, my home and my bills. I’m just the executive producer.

Chiquis, what’s it like being your mother’s manager?

Chiquis: It’s really good—what's better than to have a job with your mother, the person that you love? We’re very, very close.

Raq C, what kinds of things will we see on the show?

Raq C: You’re going to see Chiquis and I on a lot of little adventures. You’ll see us at lunch talking about boys—correction, men!—we don’t like boys. And you’ll get to see the different struggles that we go through as young Latin women who are focused on our careers.

That sounds sort of like The Hills for Latinas!

Raq C: Yes and no. The Hills is beyond scripted. Sometimes I watch it and I’m like, “wow, that is so scripted!” Chiquis and I weren’t scripted on the show. We were able to really be ourselves to the point where people may be like “wow, those chicks are pretty brave for exposing so much honesty out there. We’re Latinas and we live it—we have flavor, spice, personality and you can definitely tell that we’re more ourselves than the girls on The Hills.

Jenni: To add to what Raq-C was saying, this show is very real. And I think that what’s going to make it very, very interesting for audiences is that it’s the first reality show produced by Latin people for Latin people. I’m very proud to say that we’d like our Latin people and people in general, to see what it is to be a Latina—whether it’s a Mexicana like Chiquis or a Salvadorean like Raq-C.

What does it mean to be a Latina in your opinion?

Jenni: It means that things haven’t been easy for us because the market is still dominated by males. I want to be able to tell my people, my girls and my fans out there, that ‘yeah, we can do it.’ It’s not easy, but we can do it. And we can have fun on the way!

Why made you want to do a reality series now after you’ve been in the entertainment business for so long?

Jenni: I’ve always been sought out by the media big time. Whether I look for it or not, they’re always there trying to see what they can find or invent, or say or whatever it may be. I’m used to it. And because of that—because the name brings ratings which brings money to them—they wanted a reality show. I didn’t want to bring it out there at that time because I was a single mother of five and my children were younger. I don’t like to do something that they don’t agree with. But when they approached me again about doing a show, I said ‘you know what? My life is very interesting. They can follow me on the road with my fans and I’m just as crazy as my fans.'

Is your show scandalous?

Raq-C: I don’t think any of us are scandalous. The appropriate term is raw and real. We say things that people think of saying.

Jenni: There are some episodes where the camera catches me when I’m on stage, and Mexican music goes hand in hand with tequila and beer—a lot of my fans are like that. So they somehow get me tipsy and that’s when I say things that I think, ‘should I have said that?’ But my people know me like that. That’s the most scandalous it’s going to get, but it’s the tequila talking. Don’t blame it on Jenni. Blame it on the alcohol like the song says!

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